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Guest LarryJ_KMSO

NAVData solution?

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With the closing of the Navdata site surely there is a way for the "community" to take over this resource. I certainly understand Richard Stefan's reasons for closing but that does not mean this resouce needs to end. Perhaps Avsim or some of the larger VA's can take over the programs, files, etc. and keep producing this data for all of us to use and enjoy. Mark.


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Guest LarryJ_KMSO

MarkWhere did Stefan get the IRAC cycle input data? Is this freely available somewhere? Larry

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Guest jase439

Yes, the source data is available from NIMA:https://164.214.2.62/products/digitalaero/index.cfmThe source data requires a substantial amount of munging to make it digestable by flight sim products. It's not as complete as the databases used by the airlines however (such as the rockin' AIRAC distributions published by Prabal Ghosh many moons ago). I would say 90% of it is accurate and current, however. The data also tends to be less accurate and less current for overseas airports and navaids.Cheers,J

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Guest LarryJ_KMSO

Interesting reading. A US DOD site but their copy right says (in so many words) don't blame us if there's an error and give us credit on derivative products. Both reasonable requests. I suppose the minute you started to rely on that source, DOD might withdraw it especially in these times. Are there secondary sources?I also found that most of the unzipped text files can be imported directly into a spreadsheet program. For example, WPT.TXT is a 23 column wide list of every way point / isec. So the reading and manipulation could be done but what format does each program require? I am fond of FSNav. Guess I'll have to see if I can find out what data and in what format FSNav requires.Larry

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Guest LarryJ_KMSO

For FSNav4.6, this looks pretty easy. Stephan writes two files to the Modules/FSNavigator/Bin folder. Isec.txt is a tab delimited 4 column text list: isec id, Lat, Long, 15. I don't know what the 15 is but all the rest of this comes directly from WPT.TXT.The airway.txt file (the second file) is a 16 column tab delimited text begins with a isec that is located on an airway. Cols 1 2 &3 are Id, Lat, Long. Col5 is the airway ID (like V231) cols 7 8 & 9 and cols 12 13 14 are the adjacent isecs. For example for this segment of V231, isec ANGIL is in the middle, SKOTT and VOR FCA are the immediately adjacent isecs. The other columns I'm not certain of. One column had 8500 and another had 10000. That might be minimum flight levels while flying along those segments? Seems about right for that area. airway.txt information could be derived from ATS.TXT.It's been along time since I "programmed" a spreadsheet but isn't there a set of commands (macros) to take colum 1 and put it into the output file in column 1, take column 4 and put it into output file column 2, etc line by line until finished? Larry

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Guest LarryJ_KMSO

Mark or someone else...I hacked together a program to read DADIFT data and spit out FSNAV text files BUT I seem to be missing a number of ISECS (aka waypoints). Stephan's file has 116,255 lines where mine has only 74,363.Missing are intersections in Russia such as D008H D008J etc. Does any one know where this data is public available? I think if I had the input data I could produce the FSNAV text files that Stephan was producing. If I can get the input information, I'll crank out the files for FSNAV each month (to begin with) and upload to AVSIM.I'll post an inquiry at the FSNav site but I haven't had much success in getting a response there in the past.Thank youLarry JonesFlorence, MT

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I believe Richard had more than one data source.Using DAFIF alone will likely not get you as complete a Navdata set as Richard Stefan was distributing.Regards.Ernie.


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Ernie, you hit the nail right on the head. This is what I am trying to get accross in the PMDG forum here with little luck I am afraid. I think that most of those folks seem to think this source is complete when actualy Richard stated many moons ago that DAFIF represented about 20% of his datasets.


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Guest jase439

I don't know how much Richard relies on DAFIF. When I was publishing AIRAC cycles for 767PIC, I was using 3 different databases and wrote a number of programs which would parse and analyze the data, selecting the most recent data points where possible and filling in data that might have inadvertently gone missing.It's a long arduous pain-in-the-arse process. I don't blame Richard for closing shop. I remember well the e-mails I would get from a number of those outside North America that would accuse me of racism and bigotry because I, in my evil ways, thwarted their flight sim experience by publishing AIRAC data that was missing their favorite NDB. After a while, one must ask himself, "what is the point?"J

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Guest LarryJ_KMSO

JAs near as I can tell, about 64% of Richard Stefan's way point data comes directly from DADIFF. The project interests me because I'm an un-repentant amateur programmer.DADIFF certainly does not supply all the information, I'm certain of that. So I'd like to know the other two databases? Drop me a private email via avsim.com if you are willing to share them. Anything I come up with will be uploaded freeware to AVSIM.com. My immediate interest are data files for Squawkbox and FSNav .Larry

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Is Richard quitting and not making available his methods? If the job is too much hassle etc and he's quitting for that reason, then perhaps he can publish how he does his thing. If its an abuse/anger thing, then we may be left to our own devices?eric


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Jason I rememebr your valuable contribution well, sorry to hear you suffered the same hassle as Richard, guess folks nevr learn:-(It is true that Richard used more than one soruce of data mainly because the DAFIF ( or whatever) is US based and excludes a lot of Europe.One glimmer of hope is that Richard did say he was working on a convertor program that would take his raw data and allow the end user to convert that data into formats suitable for the various add-ons.I have no idea how far that convertor was developed, I know Richard had been working on it for months if not longer. He did mention it earlier in the year either here or on his web site. I think his original idea was to use the convertor to reduce his work load.So if Richard could be persuaded to release his convertor that would make life simpler for those who would like to continue his work.As to missing Navaids and w'pts you will always get that and Richard was kind enough to ask people to let him know about such things. However I guess there are a lot of people out there who don't know how to report such things without being abusive or abrasive.I have told Richard about missing Navaids in the UK many times and always had a polite reply from him, all you have to do is treat him as a fellow human being and not as your personal slave.

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Guest LarryJ_KMSO

Snipped from FSNav Forum:-----------------------------------------------------------------Definitifly YES ...Here are a few screenshots of the new homepage ... BUT PLEASE, don

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